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Here is the sound from a heavy rain storm that pounded North Idaho last night. Recorded on my 40 foot long deck at 3AM with a MKH-8040ST set to XY 90 degrees at 24-Bit 96K on May 4, 2012. The location faces West towards the forest and at 3AM it is very quiet here. No cars, trains, birds or anything else going on to disturb the beautiful rain drops that fall from my roof edge.

This storm woke me up from a deep sleep as I have a metal roof on the house and when we get a heavy downpour of rain it can be quite loud. This storm was fairly calm earlier in the evening so when it ramped up it was dumping huge amounts of rain and knocked me out of bed. I quickly grabbed the recording gear and set it just outside my door on the deck under the roof edge. The sound demo does not sound like a massive downpour but as you can hear it makes a wonderful splatting noise when it hits the deck. Most of the loud downpour sound is way above the microphone at the sheet metal roof line. I pointed the microphone directly towards where the rain drips where hitting the deck and since the water falls though between the deck planks it does not puddle or pool but there is just enough water on the surface that the drips splat against a thin sheet of water.

I have recorded here dozens of times and each time it sounds slightly different depending on the amount of rain falling. This kind of downpour is my favorite because it has a steady action and very little wind. Also, this time of year the leaves are still coming in on the trees so the “noise” from rain hitting thousands of leaves is barely noticeable. Enjoy! -Frank

Note: The standard single user license applies to this free sound effect.

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Here is a sound recorded from inside my Tahoe SUV. I had just arrived back at the ranch when I noticed the rain and wind had really started to get heavy. I parked in my driveway and pulled out my Sony PCM D-50 and started recording. I really just wanted to get the heavy rain drop sound hitting the roof when all of a sudden the rain turned to hail and the wind really picked up.

As you can hear in the sound demo, the wind was hitting the side of the SUV pretty hard and the good sized hail was pounding the car. I felt the Tahoe rocking from side to side and it was hard to hold the D-50 in a steady manner. I was really glad there were no trees overhead to fall over. This wind had some of the strongest gust I have ever felt during the winter. Enjoy! -Frank

Remember: If you can, always be packin’ a recorder, you never know when duty will call.

PHOTOS

Over the last three days I waited with much anticipation for the thunderstorms to roll in and give me some love…. but all I got was rain. There were some distant rumbles as the storm cells moved north very far away from my ranch. All was not lost though because it was some really awesome heavy rain and I was able to get some decent recordings with the Sennhesier 8040ST Rig.

I recorded in two locations. First, the Sennhesier 8040ST setup was placed out my door on my deck under the eave of the roof. Second, I stuck the Sennhesier 8040s out a window in my garage again under the eave of the roof as to not get them soaking wet.

Both times I did use the Rycote Windjammer over the Zepplin and noticed a slight reduction in high frequencies but not enough to cause concern. The bright top end of the mics even with the full Rycote setup had more top end than my Sanken CSS-5 obviously. The other thing I noticed was how much information these mics pick up. When the rain really intensified it hit the deck so hard that the wood tone it created was almost annoying. I processed the heavy rain on the deck with a slight EQ dip at 356Hz and rolled off below 120Hz. At one point I could faintly hear some people talking out on the back dirt road, I have no idea what they were saying or even doing there outside in the downpour.

I am really getting to know these mics and am liking the results very much. I am mainly using them in XY at 90 degrees and plan to experiment with other microphone patterns in the future.

Enjoy! -Frank

PS: If anyone would like me to release these and other rain recordings from North Idaho, let me know.